This Blog is my place for sounding out about my different Agripreneurial ventures and the impending successes and failures that come with being an Agripreneur. I am involved in many different small ventures from cattle to tropical fish and many critters between. I will post about my current ventures with updates on their status as well as projects of others. You will get to hear me sound off ideas that are in rumination and maybe watch a few of them come to fruition.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I had my wife take these pictures out of our kitchen window. It is nice to see so much green in June without having to irrigate all month. My pasture goes to the fence with wood posts in the background. You can also see the steel T-posts which are part of my management intensive grazing program (mig). The zone the calves are in has had ten days rest and the main herd just left the middle zone and moved to the furthest back zone but the are down at one end doing whatever it is they decided to do at the moment. The reason I'm blogging on these calves is that i'm collecting my thoughts on the beasts. Where they are now they won't even make a dent. There is about two acres of irrigated ground in that zone and I have a total of 5 zones one of which is about twice the size of the others but has many weeds. I will soon be blogging on that pasture and my sheep project that hopefully will make me money and fix that pastures problems all in one fell swoop. Back to the calves, I have located a large source for weaned and unweaned holstein bull calves like the ones seen here. Many of you know that I am an independant rep for ABS and I've been thinking that I could trade units of semen to some of these dairies that currently aren't buying from me for weaned calves. My commission would go towards the calves and I would have instant equity in them. I also hope that it would be a foot in the door for more sales down the road. The strategy is what needs to be developed next. If I was to say aquire ten to twenty more of the monsters what would be my next move? Would I just run them with my beef herd? Would I sell them this fall? Will they be eating my stockpiled reserves for my beef herd? Will I make decent money? When do I sell them? So many questions, yet I still like the idea.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The chaos has been overwhelming and my wife hid the camera from me. I feel bad if I post without a picture I prefer pictures myself. I better update all of my a fore blogged items as well. First off is the milk goats, things haven't been very well there. When the first kids arrived they were listless and poorly developed and soon died. I then took action and put the other doe on an aggressive mineral program involving injections and a trace minerlized iodized salt block. This seemed to be working but the developmental damage was already done. The next set of twins lived longer but were also afflicted with the same problems and died as well. Make sure when you buy goats that they have been on a solid mineral and nutrition program. Goats are more susceptible to mineral deficiencies than cattle. I do have one of the goats on loan to a neighbor who will make cheese and share with me. So there is a silver lining.

Chickens

The chickens are in full swing, i just got done incubating eggs yesterday. The hatches all went well. All in all i probably hatched 600 chicks. I sold most of them but did hold back a couple hundred for myself. The plans for them is to select 30 or 40 for my replacement birds and sell the other pullets as started in the spring for ten bucks each. My hens from this year i will sell as well. The roosters will be the problem to get rid of. I have a few leads on ways to get rid of them. I will be happy to get a few bucks out of them. I will eat any extras I have when the chickens go on welfare this winter. I did build myself a chicken tractor last week and it is really neat. All of my birds are locked up due to the youthfulness of my garden so i'm short on coop space. So the tractor works great for getting young birds ready for the real world without getting them into trouble with big chickens or cats or any of the other dangers a young chicken can face.

The Cows

The cows are all well, I added a few holstein bottle calves to the mix and used up my extra milk replacer i had laying around. They are eating grain, grass and hay now so they aren't far from weaning. My yearlings i bought this winter have been doing well and two of them were pregnant so that could have been a wreck but both calves are alive and well and I only had to pull one. I will be AIing my cows and heifers here shortly to a bull owned by ABS named Ribeye javascript:hereford("29HP0906") I hope that link works. I need to find more pasture so that i might have more room for cattle.

Hogs

The hogs are monsters and are ready for freezer camp. They are ready for their appointment to be made. I'm ready for them to be gone. I did however come across a deal on a sow. My buddy was buying one and wanted to know if i would buy one to. I said of course as i try not to ever turn a good deal down. We keep them and Ralph (the boar) over at my buddy's place. I should have a bunch of little piglets in a few months.

Pigeons

I sold all of my barn pigeons the other day for three dollars each. It was good to see them go but now i want to go catch more. My racing homers have a squab but I would like to sell them so that I can keep some chicks in that pen.

Puppies

We sold all of the Bassets and they were all gone within the week they turned eight weeks. The Goldendoodles are selling are will be old enough to leave this week. It will be good to get some kennel space back.